FIGURE 11.4
One Child In Every Classroom Or maybe two, if the class has more than 20 students or is in Alabama. This figure shows the percent of 6- to 17-year-olds prescribed psychoactive drugs in the previous six months. About half of these children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and the rest have anxiety, mood, and other disorders. These data are averages, gathered from many communities. In fact, some schools, even in the South, have very few medicated children, and others, even in the West, have many in every class. The regional variations evident here are notable, but much more dramatic are rates by school, community, and doctor—some of whom are much quicker to medicate children than others.